Tonight's programme recounts the 1976 motor racing season during which James Hunt, on the McLaren team, battled against world champion Niki Lauda, driving for Ferrari, for the Grand Prix title. Contributors include Lauda, racing champion Emerson Fittipaldi, commentator Murray Walker and the friends and family of James Hunt, who died in 1993.
The second of a new series of six programmes that relive great sporting rivalries. Tonight's programme recalls the battle between hero of the tennis establishment Bjorn Borg and the mercurial John McEnroe at Wimbledon in 1980.
The third in a new series of six programmes that relive great sporting rivalries. As unemployment, inner city rioting and an assassination attempt on the Queen distress the country in 1981, the Ashes clash sees Ian Botham sacked as England cricket captain after two disastrous results. The England team are quoted at 500-1 to beat Australia and retain the trophy. With odds like that, and the pressure taken off Botham, could the unthinkable possibly happen?
The fourth of six programmes that relive great sporting rivalries. Sport collided with politics in 1974 in one of the greatest rugby clashes ever seen - the British Lions playing the Springboks in a tour of South Africa, a country then gripped by apartheid. The Lion's tour was opposed in Britain by politicians and activists. Here, team members, including Willie John McBride, Gareth Edwards and JJ Williams, explain why they risked their reputations, and even their jobs, to breach an international embargo and take on the Springboks, a team unbeaten in 18 international matches. Other contributors include: Steve Tshwete, at the time imprisoned on Robben Island and now South Africa's Sports Minister, and former Observer editor Donald Trelford, whose paper led a protest against the tour. Home cine footage recalls the team's progress.
The fifth of six programmes that relive great sporting rivalries. The rivalry between athletes Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett reached its climax when they battled for middle distance supremacy at the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Up to this point they had dominated international middle distance running, but had met only once on the track. Coe, seen as the establishment man, held the world record at 800 metres. Ovett, depicted by the press as a rebel, was favourite to win the 1,500 metres. In Moscow they were to settle the score, but as in many great stories, there was a twist in the tail. Contributors include athletes Sebastian Coe, Steve Cram, Daley Thompson and John Walker.
The last of six programmes that relive great sporting rivalries from the past. The 1988 FA Cup final between Liverpool and Wimbledon was predicted to be an easy win for the Merseysiders. They had won the double of league and cup the previous season, while underdogs Wimbledon had languished in non-league status just ten years previously. Vinny Jones and John Fashanu, key members of a team that revelled in a robust style of play, reveal how the London team set out to intimidate Liverpool. Alan Hansen, then a Liverpool defender, recalls the opposition's behaviour in the players' tunnel before the match.
The two intense fights in the early nineties between Nigel "the Dark Destroyer" Benn and Chris "Simply the Best" Eubank enthralled the nation, as huge television audiences tuned in to see the bitter clash of two talented but totally contrasting characters. Benn, Eubank and a host of boxing glitterati relive the build-up, the genuine enmity that smouldered between the pair, the deals cut by promoters that would affect the sport for ever, the fights themselves and the bloody aftermath of the clashes at Birmingham and Old Trafford
The intense cultural and religious rivalry between these two sporting giants is traced from its social backgrounds in the dockyards of Glasgow to its current position in European soccer, a long-standing enmity that inspired one commentator to observe that "in the middle of it all a football match broke out". Chairmen, players, managers and fans relive sweet victories, bitter defeats, riots and protests
To the uninitiated the Ryder Cup could be described as a friendly golf tournament that turned nasty when the Americans started losing in the mid-eighties. Some of golfing's greatest names, Tony Jacklin , Seve Ballesteros , Peter Alliss , Lee Trevino and Nick Faldo , examine the cauldron of dirty tricks that soured the most gentlemanly of games
In 1972, at the height of the Cold War, American chess prodigy Bobby Fischer faced the Soviet master Boris Spassky in a match that was to become a political chess game between west and east. Those involved recall the players' paranoia, culminating in Fischer having all his fillings removed because he thought they might help the KGB read his mind.
The annual Home Championship fixture between England and Scotland aroused enormous passion, especially on the part of Scottish fans, who enjoyed nothing better than the chance to take on and beat the Auld Enemy. Top players, including Tom Finney , Tommy Docherty , Emlyn Hughes and Gordon McQueen , recall this inter-nation rivalry.
The last in the series on key sporting clashes goes behind the scenes of the US Army and Navy academies to follow the build-up to American football's biggest rivalry. Such is the desire to take part in the game, which is second only to the Superbowl, that players, such as Army captain Neil Ravitz , commit themselves to nine years in military service